The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday in Beaird v. United States, a case testing how much deference courts owe to the U.S. Sentencing Commission's commentary on its own guidelines. The question follows the Court's 2019 decision in Kisor v. Wilkie, which limited deference to executive agencies' interpretations of their regulations. The Court must now decide whether its older Stinson precedent, which treated guideline commentary as authoritative unless plainly erroneous, still applies after Kisor.
The case arises from a felon-in-possession conviction. The defendant's Glock had a 17-round magazine, and the sentencing guideline recommends a higher range for offenses involving a 'large capacity magazine.' The guideline text does not define that phrase, but the commentary does, as a magazine that can accept more than 15 rounds. The defendant argues that no deference should be given to that commentary, while the government contends Stinson is consistent with Kisor but that the lower court ignored Kisor's limits and should have remanded. The court-appointed amicus defends a broad reading of Stinson but suggests Kisor itself went too far.
The parties thus offer three distinct positions on the vitality of Stinson. The defendant emphasizes that deference here would let the commission effectively set criminal punishment through commentary, and he invokes the rule of lenity, which requires ambiguous criminal laws to be read in favor of the defendant. The outcome could affect countless sentencing disputes, as the commentary supplies much of the detail in the guidelines across federal crimes from fraud to firearms.